Week 12 - Who Has the Power?

I did not grow up in a traditional family.  We had so many issues, we could have started our own magazine.   I've discussed before that pretty much everything I learned about families and relationships was learned through learning what I didn't want to do because of them.  The last time I ever lived under a roof with 2 normal happily married people was when I was 4 years old.  The weekends I spent at my dads house, I learned very well that his favorite saying about the rules at his house was "This isn't a democracy, its a dictatorship!"

This week basically reinforced that everything I experienced growing up was just one big no-no as far as how families should deal with control and power.  Heres what I learned from Richard B. Miller in an address titled Who's the Boss;

• Parents should be the "executive committee" and the "Board of Directors"... not dictators.  
• Parents lead the family.  Its not about control, its about love and care.  Its about guiding your family towards smart decisions.
• Parents should create a united front.  So often in my case I was told I could only love one or the other parent.  There was absolutely no unity.  It was devistating to me as a kid.  I often wonder how different my life would have been if, even though they weren't together, they had come together to be united in parenting.  I truly think this one fact was more destructive than anything else in my younger years.
•  The hierarchy between parent and child disappears as the child becomes an adult.  I experienced both extremes with both parents... my mother went completely hands off as soon as I moved out, almost like I was just a friend from her past, and my father acted as though nothing had changed and he was still the dictator to be obeyed.  Independence is tricky.  I don't think either approach prepared me very well for the outside world.
• The marital relationship is a partnership.   I literally did not have a single example of this growing up, so I'm not quite sure what it should have looked like from a kids perspective but I know what I want it to be for my kids.  With my husbands job in law enforcement we will always say "I got your 6", which basically means we're in it together.  We know we should be equal.  Complimentary but different.

Basically I learned that I have NO IDEA how healthy marriages should function based on my own life experiences growing up.  I experienced the opposite of every single point in what I saw.  YET, I still knew it should have been different.  I knew I wanted to have a different experience.  Power in a relationship does not have to be a struggle.  I think my favorite thing I read was an interview with President Hinckley and his wife.

Church magazines: Sister Hinckley, you have said that your husband “always let me do my own thing. He never insisted that I do anything his way, or any way, for that matter. From the very beginning he gave me space and let me fly.” How has he done that?Sister Hinckley: He never tells me what to do. He just lets me go. He has made me feel like a real person. He has encouraged me to do whatever makes me happy. He doesn’t try to rule or dominate me.
Church magazines: President, you have said: “Some husbands regard it as their prerogative to compel their wives to fit their standards of what they think to be the ideal. It never works.” How have you avoided doing this with Sister Hinckley?President Hinckley: I’ve tried to recognize my wife’s individuality, her personality, her desires, her background, her ambitions. Let her fly. Yes, let her fly! Let her develop her own talents. Let her do things her way. Get out of her way, and marvel at what she does...If there is anything that concerns me, it is that some men try to run their wife’s life and tell her everything she ought to do. It will not work. There will not be happiness in the lives of the children nor of the parents where the man tries to run everything and control his wife. They are partners. They are companions in this great venture that we call marriage and family life (Marjorie Pay and Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, October 2003, pp. 22, 27).

 

We are "companions in this great venture that we call marriage and family life."  I love that.  No one wins when one person wins, but if both partners are actively rooting for the other to achieve their goals and dreams, and letting them be the individual that they fell in love with in the first place, thats when everyone wins.